Google Unveils Nexus 7 Tablet

The rumors were true. The Asus-made Nexus 7 tablet comes out of the box with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The 7″ display is 1280×800 resolution (though we’re not sure of the display type). It’s powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU with 1GB of RAM. It also has a front-facing and no rear-facing camera. According to Google, it will run for 9 hours of HD video. It’s a device very much focused on content: the home screen has special content widgets (that reminds us a lot of the B&N Nook Tablet) that allows you to “pin” your favorite books, (now) magazines, and videos.

What’s more, there are another set of new widgets that offer content recommendations. As part of these widgets, there’s one that reminds us a lot of Shazam that lets the device figure out which song is playing.

In Google Maps (which now has offline maps), you can view the interior of various locations with help with the gyroscope as you pin and move the device around.

One more twist: the Nexus 7 ships with Chrome as the default browser instead of the stock Android browser. It’s possible that this means that Chrome will be coming out of beta in the near future for those of you that use Chrome on your Android today.

The Nexus 7 is likely to reduce the price of Android tablets across the board: it’ll selling for the cutthroat price of $199 for the 8GB version and $249 for the 16GB version. With the purchase of the Nexus 7, you’ll get a $25 Google Play credit. The Nexus 7 will ship in mid July. Check it out here.

Brandon is a graduate from the Villanova School of Business, located near Philadelphia, PA. He's been a technology writer since 2002, and, in 2005, became Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow, a then Windows Mobile-focused website. He has since helped to transition Pocketnow into a top-tier smartphone and tablet publication. He's so obsessed with technology that he once entered a candle store and asked if they had a "new electronics" scent. They didn't.